Barack Obama won the election with slightly more than 50% of the popular vote, after most conservative talking heads gave Romney the advantage. The right wingers don’t get it. How could this have happened? Obama’s not against abortion, he doesn’t want to bomb Iran, he doesn’t want to reduce corporate taxes (not very much), he wants to raise taxes on rich people, he’s for gay rights. He’s liberal. What do people see in him?

I have to admit to feeling a perverse satisfaction at seeing the reaction of the disappointed whose reality is shaped by their immersion in conservative media.

Pat Robertson knew who was going to win (because God told him), yet he seemed taken aback by the results.

Rush Limbaugh was ready to give up. (Hadn’t he promise to move to Costa Rica?)
“I went to bed last night thinking we are outnumbered. I went to bed last night thinking we’ve lost the country. I don’t know how else you look at this.”

Karl Rove made excuses. He claimed that Obama had won by “suppressing the vote” with negative ads—ironic in light of Republican efforts in many states to restrict voting, in an apparent effort to skew the vote their way.

Bill O’Reilly feels threatened as his fellow good old boys continue to lose ground.
“The white establishment is now the minority, and the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff.”
“The demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore.”

Remember the famous video where Ann Coulter said, “If Chris Christie doesn’t run we’ll nominate Mitt Romney and we will lose”?Now she is saying, “Christie seemed like the kind of once-in-a-lifetime star who could pull a Reagan upset against an incumbent president. But I was wrong. Romney was the perfect candidate, and he was the president this country needed right now.”
She’s despondent that it didn’t happen that way: “We have more takers than makers, and it’s over.”

Governor Romney himself, on the other hand, was remarkably gracious.
“This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”
“We can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to work across the aisle to do the people’s work.

There’s real problems in the world. There are real knowable facts in the world. Let’s accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let’s move on from there. If the Republican party, and the conservative movement, and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation.

I wish the Republicans good luck. I really do, I want them to be able to deal with their problems. I want them to figure it out, and regain their soul. I want them to be a formidable and worthy opponent to the Democrats. As much as we might be able to devise a better way, right now we essentially have a two-party system. It may have its flaws, but it is better than a one-party system.

Meanwhile, we have survived another election. Now, let’s see if we can work together on the important issues, rather than just what is politically advantageous for one party or the other. We don’t have a lot of room for error, we don’t have a lot of time to waste.